Chinese Officials

FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT CHINESE OFFICIALS - PAGE 2

The Dalai Lama said Chinese officials were "respectful" in meetings the previous week but that large differences remained over the causes of the recent unrest in Tibet. In an interview published Friday in the German weekly Der Spiegel, the Dalai Lama was quoted as saying his representatives and Chinese officials agreed to hold a new round of talks "as soon as possible." "There were large differences over both the cause and the nature of the recent unrest in Tibet," he said, according to the report.

WASHINGTON, May 2 (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department sought to counter reports that Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng may have left the U.S. embassy in Beijing because of physical or legal threats to his family, saying that it never discussed any such threats with him. "At no time did any U.S. official speak to Chen about physical or legal threats to his wife and children. Nor did Chinese officials make any such threats to us," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in an emailed statement.

The first panda bred in captivity and released into the wild has died in China after less than a year -- the apparent victim of a fall. Chinese officials said the body bore injuries inflicted by wild pandas, and the animal may have died trying to escape. The body of the 5-year-old panda, Xiang Xiang, was found Feb. 19 in the forests of Sichuan province in China's southwest, the Xinhua News Agency said.

Eager to prevent any deterioration of relations between the United States and China over human rights and other issues, the Clinton administration has decided to move up this year's presidential trip to Beijing, senior administration officials said Wednesday. It is to be rescheduled from November to late June. Chinese officials, anxious to showcase the first visit of an American chief executive to China since the massacre of unarmed civilians at Tiananmen Square in 1989, leaped at the administration's proposal for an earlier meeting, said officials in Washington and Beijing.

An unmanned Chinese space capsule returned safely to Earth on Sunday, state media said, laying the groundwork for China to launch an astronaut into space later this year. A successful manned flight would make China only the third country, after Russia and the United States, able to send its own astronauts into space. The Shenzhou IV capsule landed as planned just after 7 p.m. on China's northern grasslands in the Inner Mongolia region, according to the official Xinhua News Agency and state television.

China on Tuesday ordained as a bishop a 43-year-old priest who has publicly declared his fidelity to the pope, four days after consecrating another Vatican-approved bishop. The ordination of Joseph Gan Junqiu as bishop of the southern diocese of Guangzhou, and Friday's promotion of Bishop Lu Shouwang in the central province of Hubei, signal a defrosting of relations between Beijing and Rome after a strained period last year when three bishops were consecrated without the Vatican's approval.

In a case that has drawn wide attention from Chinese officials and anti-Japanese anger in Internet chat rooms, authorities said Monday that they were investigating reports that a hotel was overrun for several days earlier this month by hundreds of Japanese tourists and Chinese prostitutes. Many details of the incident remain unclear. Investigators have closed the hotel in southern China where the incident is alleged to have taken place, and authorities have not released the names of any of a small number of people who have been detained.

A senior Chinese diplomat Thursday accused the Bush administration of undermining efforts to revive negotiations with North Korea and said there was "no solid evidence" that the nation was preparing to test a nuclear weapon. The comments by Yang Xiyu, a senior Foreign Ministry official and China's top official on the North Korean nuclear problem, were considered noteworthy because Chinese authorities rarely speak to journalists about the issue. The comments reflect growing frustration in Beijing with the Bush administration.

A visiting American official said Friday that he had obtained assurances from the Chinese government that several dissidents would be allowed to leave the country soon for visits abroad. The official, Arnold Kanter, undersecretary of state for political affairs, said Chinese officials told him they had issued exit permits to Han Dongfang, a labor organizer, and Liu Qing, a political dissident imprisoned from 1979 to 1989. "I was told exit permits were granted," Kanter said.

Yueling Chen believed she had walked her way onto the U.S. Olympic team by finishing second last month in the trials and into a chance for a second gold medal like the one she won in the 10-kilometer walk for China in 1992. Chinese officials, however, apparently didn't care for the idea of Chen competing for her adopted country in Sydney, refusing to grant Chen the necessary waiver to compete for the United States in the 20-kilometer walk. "This is my last chance to compete and they have completely destroyed my Olympic dream," Chen said Thursday.